Piana Degli Albanesi

Piana degli Albanesi (Albanian: Hora e Arbëreshëvet) is a comune with 6,218 inhabitants in the Province of Palermo, Sicily.

The town is the most important and populous Arbëreshë community in Sicily and it is the episcopal see of the Byzantine Church. Situated on a mountainous plateau, which is mirrored on a large lake, and on the eastern side of the imposing Mount Pizzuta, it is 24 km from the provincial capital. The community has maintained many ethnic elements of Albanian culture like language, religious ritual, traditional costumes, music and folklore. The inhabitants are the descendants of Albanian families, including nobles and relatives of Skanderbeg, that settled in Southern Italy during the Ottoman Turkish conquest of the Balkans. The municipal government uses bilingual documents and signs in Albanian and Italian under existing Italian legislation on protecting ethnic and linguistic minorities.